TINTIN by Hergé (1907-1983)

1932 Tintin on Cover Page2012 SOLD 1.34 M€ including premium

The reporter Tintin has set out to conquer the world. The character created by Hergé meets the expectations of the public of the 1930s for moralistic adventures in an increasingly dangerous world.

At first, the adventures of Tintin are published in black and white, only the cover page is in color. Hergé made a gouache cover for each of the first five Tintin books. Two of them are privately owned and represent the Holy Grail of Tintin lovers.

In 1932, after Soviet Russia and the Belgian Congo, Tintin tackles America. He is the good boy who comes to oppose the powerful gangsters of Chicago and confront the picturesque Indian customs.

The original gouache cover of Tintin en Amérique was sold for € 764K including premium by Artcurial on March 29, 2008. Tintin cooks his food and Milou-Snowy gnaws a hard bone without appreciating that they are watched by the Indians.

This work is coming back for sale at Artcurial, in Parison June 2.

POST SALE COMMENT

The press has started announcing the result, which is exceptional: € 1.34 million including premium. There was no doubt that this gouache is one of the most prestigious pieces in the whole history of French speaking comics.

1936 Tintin in China​2015 SOLD for HK$ 9.3M including premium

Hergé is only 21 years old in 1928 when the abbé Wallez entrusts him with the edition of Le Petit Vingtième, weekly supplement for the youth of the newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. Wallez uses journalism to encourage the bourgeoisie of Brussels to fascism. In 1929, Degrelle works for him. The first three Tintin stories revile communism and capitalism and exacerbate colonialism.

Wallez leaves Le Vingtième Siècle in 1933. Hergé continues Le Petit Vingtième. The popular success of Hergé's stories attracts the attention of the publisher Casterman and this new cooperation will greatly help Hergé to abandon the poorly architected and childish storytelling of the earlier Tintin albums.

Tintin leaves to the Orient in Cigars of the Pharaoh, and Le Petit Vingtième announces that this story will have an extension in China. Very concerned about the risk of anti-Chinese racism of the future album, the Chinese community of the Catholic University of Louvain challenges Hergé who suddenly understands that it is unfair to show foreigners through funny stereotypes without being previously documented on the reality.

Le Lotus Bleu appears in Le Petit Vingtième between August 1934 and October 1935. Under the influence of his new Chinese friends, Hergé manages to surround his turbulent story by an attractive and almost realistic atmosphere while expressing the Sino Japanese extreme tension of that time. The Japanese in turn are unhappy.

Casterman publishes Le Lotus Bleu as an album in 1936, with for the first time in Hergé's work five colored pictures in full page size. The original drawing of one of them in black ink and white gouache 30 x 23 cm is estimated € 1M, for sale on October 5 in Hong Kong by Artcurial in association with Spink, lot 1. This image is shown in the press release.

This drawing expresses the contemporary atmosphere of a street in Shanghai with the rickshaw, the military, the Chinese marks. Readers prefer action: of little added value for the story, this page will be discontinued at the first reissue of the album in 1939, unlike the other four full page insets that will be reused.

1937 The 34 Labours of Tintin2014 SOLD 2.65 M€ including premium

From 1934, Casterman in Tournai publishes the new Tintin albums and reissues the earlier stories.

In 1937, when young readers open L'Oreille Cassée, they cannot miss a first double page consisting of 34 drawings in white on a dark blue background displaying Tintin in the most typical situations from his adventures.

The first album, Tintin au Pays des Soviets, is not used, not for political reasons but because Casterman could not work on this story whose some drawings had been lost.

The Tintinophiles rejoice to find an intruder (a single one) : Tintin and Snowy dressed as polar explorers, a situation that will not occur until five years later.

This double page used by Casterman until 1958 encouraged the users to read again and buy all the albums. It is a masterpiece of Hergé, and an outstanding example of wordless advertising.

The original art in black ink retouched with white gouache, 35 x 53 cm is estimated € 700K, for sale by Artcurial in Paris on May 24.

The same auction also includes two lots related to another mythical image : the cover of L'Ile Noire at its reissue in 1942.

The original line drawing in ink, 51 x 35 cm, is estimated € 600K. The original color formatting made in gouache over a gray print of the same image, 39 x 30 cm, is estimated € 70K.

POST SALE COMMENT

These drawings are well among the top masterpieces by Hergé. The double page for the Casterman albums was sold for € 2.1 million and the cover art in black ink for l'Ile Noire for € 800K. The gouache for l'Ile Noire was sold for € 80K.

The above prices do not include the premium.

1937 Tintin against the Aniotas​2015 SOLD for € 770K including premium

Tintin is back safe and sound from his weird adventures in the land of the Soviets. On the initiative of the abbé Wallez, Hergé sends his young reporter in 1930 to the Congo to glorify the civilizing influence of the Belgian colonialism. Tintin au Congo, which is the first album of Hergé's maturity, is a great success.

At that time, the Aniotas are a political issue for the Belgian government. This tribal secret society opposed to white civilization promotes murder and claims for cannibalism. Their ritual includes a leopard costume to perform the murders. The popularity of Tintin in the village concerns the local witch-doctor who is also an Aniota and of course desires to suppress the hero.

Casterman publishes from 1934 the Tintin albums, still in black and white at that time. Tintin au Congo is reissued in 1937 without changes to the stripes constituting the story but with the insertion of a few additional pictures in full page size.

An original drawing for one of these 24 x 18 cm new pictures is estimated € 300K for sale by Artcurial in Paris on November 21, lot 105. Here is the link to the press release of the sale.

The scene is spectacular. Tintin is dressed in hunting costume, quietly waiting for the game. Snowy sleeps. Behind them, the man-leopard is coming without noise, ready to catch Tintin in his long claws. A detail demonstrates the refinement in Hergé's art : the eyes of the hood fit into the row of the leopard spots.

The accusations of racism that made suspend the publication of Tintin au Congo for several years began much later, at the time of the independence of Congo.

1937 Casterman in America​2017 SOLD for € 750K including premium

In 1934, the publisher Casterman takes over the destiny of Tintin whose adventures are already a success. Black and white is no more sufficient, it will be necessary to generalize the color that was hitherto limited to the images on the front covers.

Hergé and Casterman are not yet ready to color all the pages. The four or five full-page off-text drawings may be a support to introduce the color inside the albums without disturbing the reader because they are essentially evocations of ambience independently of the course of the action.

In 1936 these off-text are still in black and white. The original art of a Shanghai view with Tintin and Milou (Snowy) moving in a rickshaw was sold for HK $ 9.3M including premium by Artcurial on October 5, 2015.

Tintin en Amérique is at that date the top success in the Tintin albums. Casterman requests Hergé to produce off-text in color for preparing a new edition. The applied technique is new for Hergé. Unlike the original art of the first five covers that were made in direct gouache, Hergé prepares the drawing in Indian ink followed by a tracing paper on which he defines the coloring.

The black and white art and the tracing paper of the first full page drawing of the 1937 edition of Tintin en Amérique were kept together and are sold in a single lot by Artcurial in Paris on April 8, lot 90 estimated € 600K.

As in Shanghai one year before, it is a picture of atmosphere. The street in Chicago is lined with endless skyscrapers and Tintin defies the bandits from a taxi that clears its way in the traffic jams. Compared to the pages of the action drawn in 1931 and 1932, the graphic of the off-text is highly improved.

The modernization of Tintin en Amérique will be achieved in 1945 with a new full color version without off- text in the principles of the ligne claire, fortunately including the removal of many blunders from the original text.

​1939 Tintin and the Luftwaffe​2015 SOLD for € 1.56M including premium

From one story to another, Tintin never gets older. His post-adolescent freshness seduces his readers. This does not happen in that way in real life, fortunately. His author and father Hergé reaches an extended range of view and thought which pushes him away from the Rexisme, the Belgian fascism. Just in time. If Hergé had followed the editorial line of the newspaper that employed him, Le Vingtième Siècle, his work would not have survived the Second World War.

In Le Sceptre d'Ottokar, Tintin is in the service of the King of Syldavie (in English: Ruritania) who is a barely veiled substitute for the King of Belgium. After an operation in another country that symbolizes the Balkan fascism, Tintin comes back to Syldavie by foolishly seizing a military plane. Hergé keeps the logic by leaving the Syldavian anti-aircraft defense shooting down the enemy plane piloted by his hero when it crosses the border.

Published in Le Petit Vingtième on July 6, 1939, the plates 95 and 96 of Le Sceptre d'Ottokar show that firing. The original drawing on a single sheet 40 x 60 cm is estimated € 600K for sale by Sotheby's in Paris on October 24, lot 94.

The aircraft piloted by Tintin is a Heinkel He 118 and clearly bears the mark of that company which equips the Luftwaffe with its most terrifying bombers. Through this illustration, Hergé had warned his young readers two months before the outbreak of the war that the fascisms are supported by the Third Reich.

The plane hit by a shell falls diving. These images echo the fact that the intended use by the Luftwaffe for that Heinkel model is the bombing through a diving to the target. Heinkel is a flagship of the Nazi technology.

These pages with three rows of images are in the earlier format of the Tintin albums. When Le Sceptre d'Ottokar is redrawn for its color edition in 1947, Heinkel is no longer a threat and the aircraft becomes a Messerschmitt fighter, a brand which is better known by the readers.

1939 Last Joke before the War​2016 SOLD for € 1.05M including premium

​The complicated action of Le Sceptre d'Ottokar gets its conclusion in page 104 which explains the strategy used by the conspirators : the bandit had kidnapped his identical twin who was an honest scholar, and Tintin had successively met the two men without imagining the substitution.

104 pages are not enough for the standard of the album. Hergé realizes the final double page, 105-106, which is published by Le Petit Vingtième on August 10, 1939.

This last supply is a joke unrelated with the rest of the story: Hergé uses once again his theme of the immeasurable stupidity of Dupont and Dupond (Thomson and Thompson). The twin policemen forget that their aircraft is a seaplane, go to panic when it comes down to the sea and laugh so hard of their own naivety that they fall into the sea when leaving the plane.

The original drawing 40 x 60 cm of this double page is estimated € 600K for sale by Artcurial in Paris on April 30, lot 157.

On 1 September 1939, Germany attacks Poland. On September 3, Britain and France declare war on Germany. Germany begins immediately the invasion of Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France.

Hergé continues to work. The first page of L'Or Noir is published by Le Petit Vingtième on September 28, 1939. This story is interrupted in May 1940 by the intensification of the military operations. Hergé temporarily abandons L'Or Noir and begins publishing Le Crabe aux Pinces d'Or in October 1940 in the supplement for the youth of the newspaper Le Soir.

1939 The Catapulted Sceptre​2016 SOLD for € 810K including premium

Every week from 4 August 1938 to 10 August 1939, Le Petit Vingtième includes a double page in three rows of images of the new adventure of Tintin, Le Sceptre d'Ottokar. Hergé prepares the double plate on a single sheet of paper 40 x 58 cm. Large drawings 22 x 25 cm are also made for the cover page of the magazine. All drawings are made in black ink, light blue watercolor and white gouache.

The drawings of that story were scattered by Hergé who enjoyed to present them to his collaborators and friends. Some pieces come at auction to the delight of the collectors.

Prices follow the degree of tension in the story. The cover art in which Tintin shears the beard of the professor was sold for € 380K including premium by Banque Dessinée on June 28, 2015. The more emotionally charged drawing where Milou (Snowy) brings the sceptre back to the king was sold for € 540K including premium by Millon on 14 December 2014.

Now let us consider the original art of the double pages.

Sheet 75-76 was sold for € 243K including premium by PIASA on May 29, 2010. Sheet 95-96 advantaged by the highly popular theme of war aviation was sold for € 1,56M including premium by Sotheby's on 24 October 2015. The final double page of this story will be sold by Artcurial on April 30 and will be the subject of another discussion in this column.

Sheet 77-78, published by Le Petit Vingtième in early May 1939, is estimated in excess of € 900K for sale by Tajan in Paris on March 12, lot 93. Here is the link to the auction house's website.

It is highly appealing by the cleverness of the action: Tintin finds that the leaving of the sceptre from the closed room was performed with the photo camera turned into a catapult by the thief. He validates his theory by throwing a model by this method up to the woods beyond the river. Arriving at the presumed location of the impact, he sees two men obviously busy to search for the real sceptre.

1939 Glory for Milou in the Petit Vingtième2014 SOLD for € 540K including premium

In 1928, the Belgian daily newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle creates Le Petit Vingtième, a supplement for young readers published every Thursday. They entrust as the editor Georges Remi, 21 years old, already known by his pen name Hergé.

Tintin appears in 1929. Until the demise of the Vingtième Siècle in 1940 during the German occupation, the Petit Vingtième supports the continuous development of the art of Hergé, who devotes to this job all his energy and skill.

The image becomes simple and highly readable, with a black line of regular thickness which will receive post war the color as a cloisonné and is now named Hergé's ligne claire. The first story that will not need to be reworked is L'Oreille Cassée, in 1937-1938.

Le Vingtième Siècle was a monarchist newspaper and the barely concealed analysis of the political events around the adventures of Tintin was much appropriate to them. In 1938-1939, le Sceptre d'Ottokar is a direct reaction to the Anschluss. The threat of dictatorship against the king of Syldavia is an incentive for the Belgians to love and protect their king.

On December 14 in duplex in Brussels and Paris, Millon sells the original art 22 x 25 cm in black ink and some blue pencil for a cover of Le Petit Vingtième, published on July 20, 1939, lot 30 estimated € 350K, illustrated in the article shared by Le Soir. Like many other drawings by Hergé, it was dedicated much later when the artist presented it to a friend.

This large drawing is important for two reasons. It is a fine example of the clear line of Hergé, perfectly mastered just before the Second World War. It shows a highly emotional scene of Le Sceptre d'Ottokar when Milou (Snowy the dog) saves the monarchy by bringing back to the king the stolen scepter.

1954 A Young Boy on the Moon2016 SOLD for € 1.55M including premium

War is over and Hergé endeavors to rely his new themes on novelties. The frightening German missiles suggest that the conquest of space will soon be possible. In the USA the atomic plant at Oak Ridge is a model for a modern organization capable of carrying out industrial projects of unprecedented ambition.

Hergé decides to send Tintin, his dog and his friends on the Moon after they contributed to the development of the space program. The story is titled On a marché sur la Lune (English title : Explorers on the Moon) and will be pre-published in the Belgian weekly Journal de Tintin.

The publication began in 1950 but was stopped after 24 pages, just before the launch of the test rocket. The novelty of the subject, seven years before Sputnik 1, apparently intimidated Hergé ever anxious to wrap his fantasies in a realistic surrounding. He takes the relevant information on the lunar topography, on movements in weightlessness and on the weak gravitational pull of the Moon.

The weekly issue restarts two years later and ends on 30 December 1953. Unlike the pre-war stories that were prepared in double pages, each original is limited to one page.

They must now prepare for the album. The story is very long and is split at that time in two albums released in 1954 : the adventures on Earth become Objectif Lune (English title : Destination Moon) and the actual journey retains the original title. To adjust to two books of 62 pages each, many changes are made in the settings of the pages and some gags are reworked.

Two original drawings 37 x 51 cm in black and white before letters and colors are sold in Paris on November 19 by two separate auction houses.

Christie's sells the page 117 of the first version, published in Le Journal de Tintin on December 9, 1953 and remaining unchanged as page 59 of second album. The rocket reaches Earth after a late braking and a disaster is likely. The traveling heroes are not visible. The art is estimated € 350K, lot 75.

Artcurial sells the page 26 of the second album, which is a rearranged copy of the bottom of page 78 and of the full page 79 of the pre-publication. The arrival of Milou (Snowy) on the Lunar ground and his first experience with Lunar gravitation have been simplified. This page shows the astonishment of the characters in those conditions that no living creature had experienced before them. It is funny and emblematic. It is estimated € 700K, lot 498.